Monster Madness Read Free

and pulled out a heavy, metal object. It was the size and shape of a toaster and had numerous switches and lights on it.
    “What’s that crazy-looking thing?” Theodore asked.
    “Watch.” Charlie stepped back into the bedroom. With a wave of his hand, he closed the portal behind him and then set the metal contraption on the floor next to the bed. He flipped a switch. The strange device began to hum as the lights on it glowed.
    “It’s actually just a modified car battery,” Charlie explained. “It doesn’t last as long as a regular one, but it puts out a ton more juice.”
    “It’s a Gremlin attractor!” Violet exclaimed.
    Charlie nodded. “The little pests can’t resist this thing. Just watch. It won’t take long for those electricity junkies to show up.”
    It didn’t.
    Dora’s closet door swung open with a creak, and a monkeylike creature with orange fur, a long tail, and a wide jaw scrambled through. The electricity inside the battery drew the Gremlin like a magnet—it didn’t even seem to notice the humans.
    “That thing was living in my closet?” Dora asked incredulously.
    “Yup,” Charlie answered. “And I bet it’s not the only one around.”
    It wasn’t.
    Moments later, a second Gremlin dropped into the room through an air vent in the ceiling, and a third came running in from the hallway, brushing past Dora’s father as it did. All three creatures crowded around the battery and began gnawing at it with their thick teeth, trying to get to the delicious electricity coursing inside.
    “Sweet!” Theodore exclaimed. “That looks like all of them, so I’ll just go ahead and banish them back to the Nether real quick…”
    He stepped toward the creatures, but Charlie put out a hand to stop him.
    “What?”
    “Why don’t you let the Banisher do the banishing?” Charlie nodded to Violet.
    “Oh, come on,” Theodore moaned. “I can do it. They’re just Gremlins—they’re the trash of the Nether!”
    “I know you can do it, but she can do it much better, just like you can portal way better than she can.”
    “Portaling is for sissies,” Theodore grumbled. Even after six months of training, he still regretted not having been picked as a Banisher by the Trout of Truth, but he stepped aside to let Violet approach. The old, pitted dagger she kept between her belt and her jeans glowed a dim electric blue as she neared the Nethercreatures.
    One by one, they stopped chewing on the battery and took notice of her and her glowing blade.
    “Hi, little fellas,” she said. Then, with truly magnificent speed, she snatched two of them up by the scruff of the neck. They shrieked furiously, trying to snap at her with their filthy mouths. “Bite me and I’ll bite you back,” she threatened, then nodded to the remaining Gremlin by the battery. “Theodore, you wanna help me out and grab that last one?”
    “Sure thing!”
    As he reached for the creature, a black tentacle suddenly shot out from underneath Dora’s bed. It snatched the Gremlin and yanked it into the darkness.
    “What was that?” Charlie yelled.
    The captured Gremlin started squealing as if in terrible pain, then went suddenly, ominously silent.
    Next came the crunching sounds.
    “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Dora said, clutching her stomach. “Do something…”
    But, before anyone could, two more tentacles shot out, snatched the remaining Gremlins right out of Violet’s hands, and yanked them into the darkness under the bed.
    More squealing. More crunching sounds.
    “What is that thing?” Dora’s father asked, his voice barely a whisper.
    “I’ll check it out.” Theodore set the panic horn on the nightstand and looked under the bed.
    “Be careful…,” Charlie warned.
    “Hey. Relax. It’s me.”
    A heaving mass of flesh pulsed softly in the shadows, black and shiny as motor oil, with two red eyes and an irregular mouth full of twisty, sharp teeth. As the thing finished chewing the last of the Gremlins, its body